Barcelona is located in the north east of Spain near Mediterranean sea between two rivers and surrounded by mountains.
History
The origins
Have been found settlements from the late Bronze Age, but the origins are from the 1st century A.D. when the romans founded Barcino; of that they are numeorus archaeological vestiges like the two roman walls that show the first structured urban nucleus that with different outlines kept the city walled until the nineteenth century.
13th century
A second city wall was built at the end of the thirteenth century to protect the new ravals near the very beautiful Basilica Santa Maria del Mar. Arround this church, the names of the streets are still the professionals, artists, merchants and navigators. You will find also the Montcada street with the noble palaces (most of them are museums now). Arround Sant Jaume Square, the political and geographic center, there is the Gothic quarter, the medieval city with the Plaça del Rei (square of the king) where there is the royal palace, churches and chapels, houses and palaces and the cathedral. Also medieval are the historic Hospital of the Santa Creu, the drassanes (where they constructed the boats), the monasteries of Sant Pau del Camp (the oldest church in Barcelona) and the monestry of Pedralbes.
16th-18th centuries
They built the churches of Betlem, the Mare de Déu de la Mercè, the Casa de la Caritat and the Virreina Palace in Las Ramblas full of neoclassical facades, a very special avenue where you can find curious people like musicians, actors and always crowded of tourists which is the heart of the city.
War of secession
After the 1714 war of secession with Spain, there was the occupation and they built a fortress (Ciutadella) that now is a public park. By then, Barcelona experienced a period of economic revival again.It was starting the capitalist time, changing the old rural traditions in a modern and industrial city.
Universal exhibition
Barcelona was growing everyday more and more and it had to change demolishing the city walls and adding the neighbouring towns. They also made the 1888 Exposició Universal (Universal Exhibition) where there was the fortress. They started the new city with the Eixample with its very beautiful buildings
made by modernist architects like Gaudí that made the houses for rich people and the important burgeoisie of Barcelona.
The first railway in Spain
Barcelona keeping with its industrial history inaugurated the first railway in Spain in 1848 and lived a boom of the economy and the culture, becoming at the beginning of the twentieth century very important by its advances in science, technology and avant-garde in culture turning into a modern city. The barricades and sacking of religious buildings in the Setmana Tràgica (Tragic Week) of 1909, the gangsterism of the 1920s, the Second Republic, the military revolt and the bombs of the Civil War (1936 - 1939) left behind a defeated city, without energy or memory, to confront the long post-war period.
Olympic Games
In 1992 Barcelona experienced a new change again when organised a superb Olympic Games, transforming areas, making new buildings and turning into the modern city which we enjoy right now, in keeping with its traditions, opened to the sea and to other cultures and peoples, giving and receiving.